[LINK] Page Speed

[Greg Taylor]

On 2011/04/17 2:06 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
> On 2011/Apr/17, at 3:17 AM, Scott Howard wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 1:54 AM,<stephen at melbpc.org.au>  wrote:
>>
>>> Just a little exploration ..
>>>
>>> <http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com>
>>
>> The page Parliament of Australia: Home got an overall Page Speed Score of
>>> 9 (out of 100). http://www.aph.gov.au/
>>>
>> And yet that page loads very fast for me.
> That page loads almost instantly for me.
>
> Makes me wonder about the accuracy of pagespeed.
>

The Page Speed site specifically says "The Page Speed Score does not 
measure the time it takes for a page to load."

It suggest ways to improve the design or reduce bloat within the page 
itself, but not by reference to an arbitrary load-time target. Browser 
caching and lossless image compression seem to be prominent 
recommendations. With the APH site, the low score arises mainly from the 
use of dozens and dozens of GIFs (most of which only contain text or 
coloured lines). This is pre-millenial web design! Admittedly, 
redesigning a large website is a big deal, but maintaining an old design 
like APH must also require a lot of resources.

I've tested a few CMS-based pages which one might think would be a 
little bloated, but they generally scored in the low 80s. The PM's page 
is a modern Drupal-based design, and it scores 72. Main issue was lack 
of browser caching of images.
http://www.pm.gov.au/

Mind you, several of the Linkers' pages tested by Stephen are still 
using pre-millenial html designs, and don't validate well ;-)

Greg